UnitedHealth Group executives seem to be happy with their employer plan business, but not eager to say much about the business.
Tim Noel, the chief executive officer of UnitedHealth's UnitedHealthcare business, talked about employer plans, briefly, today during a conference call the company held to discuss results for the first quarter with securities analysts.
"Self-funded offerings continue to perform well," Tim Noel told the analysts.
But the company continues to believe that underlying medical costs went up about 7% to 8% in 2025, and that costs will continue to go up at about the rate this year and next year, and it's using a 10% increase assumption when it sets prices, Noel said.
"We are approaching the 2027 selling season with a focus on appropriate pricing for the elevated cost environment," Noel said.
UnitedHealthcare is also trying to develop new tools employers can use to hold coverage costs down and encourage employees to take care of themselves, Noel said.
UnitedHealth streamed the call online and has posted a recording on its website.
What it means: UnitedHealth may be quicker to talk to employers and their benefits advisors about the importance of pricing discipline this year than to offer them a better deal than the carrier down the street.
The earnings: UnitedHealth reported $6.5 billion in net income for the first quarter on $112 billion in revenue, compared with $6.5 billion in net income on $110 billion in the first quarter of 2025.
The total number of people in plans that the company insures or administers, including Medicare and Medicaid plans, fell to 49 million, from 50 million.
Commercial enrollment: The number of people in self-insured employer plans that UnitedHealth administers increased 3.5%, to 22.3 million.
Enrollment at fully insured plans of all kinds fell 8.1%, to 7.7 million. The company did not provide separate figures for group and individual fully insured coverage.
In January, UnitedHealth predicted fully insured enrollment would eventually fall to 6.9 million.
Because of rules changes for Affordable Care Act exchange plans and the expiration of a high, temporary subsidy boost provided in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, "the individual ACA business continues to contract," Noel said. "We still expect total membership to decline by approximately one-third in 2026."
If UnitedHealth earns any profits on individual exchange plan business this year, it will return the profits to the enrollees, Noel said.
Affordability: UnitedHealth announced Monday that it will eliminate most prior authorization requirements for medical care for about one-quarter of U.S. hospitals and the hospitals' affiliated health care providers.
But the company may not be backing away from all efforts to manage use of care.
Noel said during the conference call that UnitedHealth now has better tools for identifying and addressing "outlier activity" that could drive up costs in all health insurance product lines.
When the company sees outlier patterns, it will "engage early with clinical programs, with payment integrity programs, and then, in certain cases, [provider] network actions," Noel said.
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